Events

Thursday, April 24 2014

In the pre-digital era before cellphones, satellites, and the internet allowed travelers to instantly transmit their photos and comments to family and friends, Americans relied on “snail mail” and the picture postcard.

More than 200 examples of Kansas City postcards from the early to mid-1900s are featured in an encore presentation of the exhibit Greetings from Kansas City: Postcard Views of a Midwestern Metropolis, 1900-1950. Created in 2013 and originally displayed from January through June of that year, the exhibit earned the American Library Association’s 2014 Excellence in Library Programming Award.

For more than a century, the Kansas City Stockyards fed a nation hungry for fresh meat. The heyday of the stockyards is long gone, undermined by flood, environmental concerns, and shifting economics. But this powerful financial engine is celebrated in Cowtown: History of the Kansas City Stockyards, a new exhibition of photographs, blueprints, drawings, and documents culled from more than 5,000 items retrieved from a Livestock Exchange Building storeroom in 2008.

Hixon transformed the field of portrait photography in Kansas City and the surrounding region during a career that spanned more than seven decades. His studios—the first in the Brady Building at 11th and Main Streets, and the second just one block west in the Baltimore Hotel—welcomed thousands of patrons throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

Get your competitive juices flowing challenging your friends with a variety of games like NBA 2K14, Madden NFL25, Halo 5, Soulcalibur V . If you are more of a Wii fan, Smash Bros., Mario Cart, Dragon Ball Z may engage you in a friendly joust with your peers.
A nice collection of board games are available.

This program explores the universal reality of retirement, as well as the many savings and investment options individuals can rely on when planning for the future. It includes information relevant to each stage in a working adults life, from 20-somethings to the final years.

The Kansas City Public Library is hosting Money Smart Month programs across multiple Library locations during April 2014.

The Library will waive up to $30 in overdue fines and fees for any Kansas City Public Library cardholder who attends one or more of these Money Smart Month events.

Mary Roach, designated as “America’s funniest science writer” by The Washington Post, takes us on a tour of the alimentary canal, that much-maligned tube from mouth to rear.

In a public conversation with Kaite Stover, the Library’s director of readers’ services, Roach will discuss her latest book and ask questions others fear: How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? Can wine tasters really tell a $10 bottle from a $100 bottle? Why is crunchy food so appealing? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? She examines a pet food taste-test lab and delves into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal.

Roach is the best-selling author of Stiff (about the human body after death), Bonk (the science of sex), and Spook (the afterlife).